


This Day of Days

by orphan_account



Category: Yes (Band)
Genre: Birthday, Birthday Sex, Drabble Sequence, M/M, Vignettes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-23 04:32:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/618100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>22 220-word vignettes about 22 of Jon's birthdays.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Day of Days

#### 1962: Eighteen Years Old

Jon tells his brother Tony that the boy who lives down the street, who helped them out around the neighbors’ farm three summers earlier, told him he has a cute face and asked Jon to meet up with him behind that old barn they used to clean that night for a birthday present. He fancies he should like to do it if only he knew the fellow a little better. But he’s never been alone like that with another boy before. Whatever should he do?  
For a second this seems to surprise Tony. His eyes grow wide as he turns around and looks at Jon across the bedroom they share. Jon clasps his hands before his chest. It is eighteenth birthday and what he wants as a gift is advice. The Anderson family is rather poor. Jon pleads with his eyes.  
Tony’s expression softens from shock to dull, sad horror. “I don’t know, Jon, I haven’t, either.”  
“Oh…” Jon pouts. “Well…Perhaps I’m just to kiss him, right? Do you think?”  
Tony hesitates. “Perhaps.”  
“He’s awfully handsome.” Jon speaks quietly, smiling while his eyes close. “Strong, too. There’s ever so much he could do, don’t you think?”  
“I.”  
Jon stands still and watches Tony’s face. It is hesitating, pursing, flinching. For Jon’s sake.  
“…Perhaps next year I’ll be ready,” he says.

#### 1963: Nineteen Years Old

The Warriors are going places, Jon thinks. Tony and me and all of us, we shall be something excellent so very soon. They have just finished up a show in Liverpool, at last. Beside an enthusiastic bartender on his break, Jon lingers in the car park behind the bar, fixing his ovoid Beatles cut in the mirror of Tony’s car.  
“You lot were great tonight,” the bartender says.  
Jon turns around and smiles up at him, but the color rushes to his face, red against the black and white of his hair and suit and skin. The bartender had given Jon his name amid the clamor of the bar inside, and Jon hadn’t caught it. Aaron or Eric or something. It hurts. Whatever his name is, he is too tall, too angularly handsome, for Jon to ask again. “Thank you muchly,” he says. “Very well a kind sentiment for a backup singer like me to hear!”  
“Don’t get like that,” Aaron or Eric replies. “Sometimes backup singers are better than the headliner.”  
Jon shakes his head. He, better than Tony. No, he laughs. “Better how?”  
“Nicer voice.” He waits. “Prettier.”  
His blush can’t hide behind his hand. “You don’t mean that.”  
Aaron or Eric pulls Jon into his arms, leaning in when Jon does. He kisses him. He proves it.

#### 1964: Twenty Years Old

Jon thinks that he likes David.  
He won’t tell Tony, no, nor anyone else in the band, because whatever the devil kind of conflict of interest would that be? So he kindly requests that before David move his hand any lower down his back to not say anything to anyone else, just in case.  
David responds by leaning in and kissing Jon on the lips, his tongue making a dash inside. “But I like you too much. I want the world to know it.”  
“That’s all—” his words are cut off first by another kiss, then by David’s hand squeezing his bum. And Jon picks up where he left off. “—That’s—that’s all well and good, David, you see, but don’t you find it maybe…I don’t know, troublesome?”  
“Love’s not troublesome,” David says. He lays Jon down on the carpeted floor of his bedroom. “Let’s not talk about this right now. What would you like to do tonight? Special night. Special boy. Are you…Ready yet?”  
Jon smiles, his eyes rolling away from David looming over him. His teeth clamp down on his bottom lip. “Anything but that.”  
Jon catches David trying to mask a flicker of a frown before he says, “I suck you, you suck me?”  
“Alright.”  
“Don’t be shy, now.”  
Jon thinks that David likes bragging.

#### 1965: Twenty-One Years Old

What a wonder is Germany! Jon may have been abandoned by his brother but he is free here, and there are so many people here, so many women with their praises of his voice and so many men with praises of his body, so many men that Jon may choose to kiss, and some of those on whom he may use his tongue, and some of those with whom the clothes may come off so the touching can take over and fingers and hands cover the bodies, and some of those on whom Jon may use his mouth, and after he filters it down enough, after he sifts and sifts and sifts the men like flour he finds one who shows him a night so lovely and so calming and so gentle that Jon is finally ready and they go down by the Rhine and he spreads Jon’s legs around him and thrusts into him and at first Jon wails so loudly he wonders if the other Warriors have heard his battle cry and it is painful, it is tremendously painful, letting someone into him so they can know him inside and out, but he’d trade his place for nothing, and after he comes he forgets his own name and his partner’s, and he recovers the memory of only one.

#### 1966: Twenty-Two Years Old

There is a possibility that Jon is a kept mistress. Friedrich, the slick-haired fiftysomething accountant at the German Decca office, gives Jon a second check anytime he has to give him one. On Jon’s birthday he gives him three—one for Warriors royalties, one from his generous wallet, and one for the special occasion—and takes him out for dinner, already a monthly ritual, and then to his home for wine. He likes to stroke Jon’s hair, touch his lips with his thumb, give him things to wear, lacy stockings, fluffy handcuffs.  
Tonight he insists on none of it. He strips Jon on his bed, caresses his thigh, and asks him how he feels about being twenty-two.  
“Just fine,” says Jon, the ingénue. He tilts his head when Friedrich scratches his chin, as if Jon is a delicate Persian kitten. “Mmm, and you’re how old, again?”  
“Don’t ask me that,” Friedrich says, and leans in to lave up and down Jon’s neck. “It’ll just make me sad that I’m not young and talented like you.”  
“Is that what I deserve?” Jon asks. “Someone young and talented?”  
He eases Jon onto his stomach. His touch is strong but gentle. It knows and has known for years. “You deserve whatever you want. But I think you deserve to be taken care of.”

#### 1967: Twenty-Three Years Old

“How long have you been back in London, Jon?”  
“A—a few months. I suppose—I—six or so. Ahh. Whyever do you ask…?”  
“Trying to see how long it’s taken you to go from rock star to groupie.”  
“I was…N-never a rock star, Keith…”  
“You say that.”  
“Ahh—”  
“Does it hurt?”  
“No!”  
“—Do you like it?”  
“Goodness yes.”  
“That’s right.”  
“Oh my goodness—ahh—Keith, I—You’re so—”  
“So what?”  
“Mmm—t-turn me over.”  
“So what?”  
“So talented, so—everything I guessed from watching you play—please turn me over…”  
“‘Watching me play?’”  
“Please—”  
“Have you come to all our shows to think about this?”  
“Keith—”  
“Have you been waiting till your birthday to flirt with me?”  
“Go deeper.”  
“Have you?”  
“Please.”  
“You have.”  
“Please?”  
“Whatever you say. You must have worked awfully hard.”  
“Oh my heav—ahhh…!”  
“You’re such a precious little creature, though, aren’t you? You don’t need to come up to someone like me. You can do this all on your own, entrance some fellow and go from there, you don’t need Keith, you don’t need The Nice, because I’m telling you, Jon, you’re too sweet for all this. How long have you been at it? What do you want from it? Is it too late to turn you over?”  
“…Yes.”

#### 1968: Twenty-Four Years Old

Jon Anderson and Chris Squire are in love. They play together in a promising outfit called Yes and have been inseparable since the night they met, seven months ago. Tonight they stay in a guest room at the Leicester family home of their keyboardist after a show and they rest naked in each other’s arms. Were they with anyone but each other they agree they wouldn’t visit this conduct upon a friend’s parents’ linens.  
Chris kisses Jon on the forehead, his hands, each the size of a housecat, anchor him in place by the hips. Jon giggles in place, his cheeks hot prematurely. He has never been with someone like Chris, someone so docile and kind, but so quiet, so mellow. Chris is twenty and tall and as slow-churning, as deep, as powerful, as melancholy as the sea. Jon can see the sea in Chris’ eyes.  
We are lifebonded soulmates, Jon thinks. Our stars are of the water—I am Scorpion ice, he is Piscean mist. Water begets water and returns to water. No matter what happens between us we shall return to one another. He knows the nature of water, the nature of me. I know him. I am a secret kept safe with him. No one will find me with Christopher. Touch me, he thinks, and Chris does.

#### 1969: Twenty-Five Years Old

Outside it rains because it is just enough degrees too warm to snow, so Jon and Chris stay in Jon’s bedroom. They share a house with Bill, their drummer, and it’s really an awful place, but with the weather the way it is they’d choose to be nowhere else. Until the nighttime, when they have to play a show, they’ve decided to try this tantric lovemaking thing Jon has discovered. They cycle through all the positions they’ve ever tried, one after another, never climaxing.  
Jon has figured out the trick to avoiding it by 14:30, when he slides down onto Chris’ length and into his lap, then moves his hips up again, then back down. Repeating. He must think of anything but sex, anything but the feeling that makes his breath tickle his lips and his chest swell with each inhalation. He thinks about songs he’s written. Lyrics. He has to think about why he’s written the lyrics he’s written, how many pronouns he’s had to change, why he chose the words he did.  
Why “Sweetness?” Because of Chris. Up.  
Why “Clear Days?” Because of Chris. Down.  
Why “Yesterday and Today?” Because at that moment Chris holds his hand and tells him, “We could sing right now and we would sound lovely,” and it makes Jon break the tantric flow.

#### 1970: Twenty-Six Years Old

The band has a day off between a show in Plymouth and another in Romford, but more importantly, it is unseasonably warm and sunny and Jon and Chris decide to meet in a meadow far outside the city. Their days are filled with travel, but one more trip doesn’t hurt.  
When they arrive, Jon leads Chris over to a copse ringed with heather and they settle in the midst of it. Chris strokes Jon’s hair, the side of his face. “Happy birthday,” he says.  
Jon says, “I love you.” Because he does. He loves Chris more every day. Two and a half years since they met and Jon knows he’d marry him if he could. He’s daydreamed about their wedding so often he can taste the cake.  
He thinks this even as Chris plants his head between Jon’s legs and unzips his denims. “I want to make every one of your birthdays better than the last,” Chris says, teasing Jon’s shaft between his fingertips.  
Jon moans. “Oh, Christopher, only you ever could.”  
Chris chuckles, his lips brushing the tip. “I doubt I’m the only man on this earth willing to suck you in a meadow on a day like this.”  
“That’s a terrible theory,” Jon says. And Chris wraps his lips around Jon’s length to silence his protests. To win.

#### 1971: Twenty-Seven Years Old

Jon wakes up in Chris’ arms and for an hour lies there watching him until he wakes up and the first thing he says is a groggy “happy birthday.” Jon thanks him groggily and then Chris groggily makes love to him and tells him to wait until tonight, because he’ll repeat it, only better. Then they both fall back to sleep for a while.  
Everyone is tired anymore. Everything is the kind of exciting where it is exhausting. Jon drifts in and out of post-coital morning slumber thinking about the show, the setlist, their new keyboardist. Chris, he thinks about Chris.  
Their new keyboardist, though.  
Their new keyboardist is a young fellow, but one of the most talented Jon has ever known. Rick Wakeman, talented and positive and hilarious and tall and golden-haired. A wonder. Jon led the charge to poach him. He had to have him.  
In the band.  
Before they go on stage, Rick approaches Jon and wishes him a happy birthday. “Show them what they’re dealing with tonight, birthday boy.”  
“Ricky,” Jon giggles. “Thank you very much.”  
Rick extends his hand toward Jon’s head. Jon thinks that he is about to be patted, but Rick’s hand lingers atop Jon’s hair. Then his fingers comb through it. And then he walks away without expression. Jon’s hair stays ruffled.

#### 1972: Twenty-Eight Years Old

Rick says, “I don’t know what to get you.”  
“Oh,” Jon sighs. “You could get anything for me and I’d be ever so happy.”  
“Now, that doesn’t help me at all,” Rick laughs, taking Jon’s hand in his. Jon’s fingers wrap around Rick’s hand, but not enough for skin to completely touch skin. “I want to spoil you.”  
Jon thinks he sounds like Chris. But Chris is not around right now. Chris is, as Rick has come to Jon’s house to report, scrambling around London trying to make last-minute preparations for a disaster of a “surprise” party, and Jon should try to humor him. Chris is nowhere but in Jon’s mind.  
“You couldn’t spoil me, Ricky,” he says.  
“Let me,” Rick says, and brings Jon’s knuckles to his lips.  
This, and then he kisses a line up Jon’s arm all the way to his neck, and his lips, which Jon, thinking of four necessarily clandestine years with Chris, cannot deny. He kisses Rick back but pushes him away, softly, like petting a cat.  
Yet the tingle stays on his lips that night when Chris lays him down and apologizes for the poorly managed party. “You weren’t surprised,” he says. “I’m sorry.”  
“No, it was wonderful,” Jon says. He kisses him so hard it makes his lips ache. “You spoil me.”

#### 1973: Twenty-Nine Years Old

Jon and Chris spend the entire day in bed together, leaving only to eat, but clothes never factor into the equation once. Chris suggests they slip into the tub together, and Jon practically springs like a bullfrog into the bath to satisfy him.  
In the water Chris lets his fingers do the work. He slides one into Jon at first, then a second, and before Jon has found himself something dry onto which to grip, Chris is alternating any three or four fingers between both of his hands. Somewhere in the kissing Jon manages to steady one hand on the rim of the tub, the other busy working up and down Chris’ shaft.  
They can’t kiss. Jon bites his lips too often, and when he isn’t, he gasps, moans, whimpers a shaky “Christopher” if he can manage it. They’ve returned to the water, where they made love for the very first time the night they met, five and a half years ago.  
And yet he begs Chris to go in, please, I need it. Fingers are too thin, too fleeting, like twinkling stars, like sequins under a spotlight. Like weeks earlier, in the studio, when once again he’d found himself alone with Rick, and off went the pants and out came the fingers. What a terrible time, now, to come.

#### 1974: Thirty Years Old

Chris and Jon spend the weekend at a cottage they bought in the country. Ever since Rick left and the tour ended work has picked up but everyone has calmed. Steve and Alan know about them, and they know about Steve and Alan, surprisingly. Tomorrow they’ll have everyone over for dinner but today belongs to only the two.  
In the evening, sitting in the garden, Chris presents Jon with a necklace, adorning him with it and kissing him and wishing him a happy birthday, and Jon would have reacted with the same bristling, bell-like laugh if he’d received nothing more than the necklace. It has on it one silver charm, the Scorpio glyph. Jon studies it.  
“Do you like it?” Chris asks.  
He has to fight not to cry when he responds that he loves it. He loves it every bit as much as he does his Christopher. He gets up and sits on his lap and throws his arms around his shoulders and tells him he loves him once for every year they’ve been together. Chris responds as many times.  
“My Fish,” Jon sighs. “We are both water and I shall always, always flow with you.”  
Chris says, “You’re silly. We flow together.”  
“We are tributaries.” Jon smiles as Chris lifts him into his arms and carries him inside.

#### 1975: Thirty-One Years Old

Chris has written an entire album for Jon.  
After years of trying to refrain his ecstatic giggles while singing to, at, with Jon, he has made an album, and everything is dedicated to him. He has hidden all the information about what he’s been working on as if it were a jewel under the sea. Chris has received his advance copy of his solo effort and listens to it with Jon on and for his birthday, but before they finish the third track they fall to the floor, clothing cast aside.  
How incredible, Jon thinks, to hear Chris panting atop him while the sound of his voice, singing, wafts about. It makes Jon rake his fingernails through the carpet. Chris kisses all the way down his back, stopping only to align the tip of his length with Jon’s entrance.  
He bends forward to huff into his ear, “I’m sorry it’s taken me seven years.”  
“Well,” Jon replies, the fourth song beginning with a slow blinking synth tune. “This one’s called ‘Lucky Seven,’ right?”  
“I’m going to die from you, Jon.”  
Jon laughs, but he wants to cry. “You’re much too good to me, Christopher.”  
“No, I’m not,” Chris answers. “Say that all you want. God, I love you. May I go in?”  
“Whenever you please, my Fish. Take your time.”

#### 1976: Thirty-Two Years Old

Rick has agreed to rejoin Yes, but he’s living out of the country in tax exile, so Jon counts the days until they travel to Switzerland to meet up, write, and record. He looks at his calendar. Forty-four days.  
He wonders what he will look like, since it’s been such a long time. Between touring, writing, recording, and giving interviews he hasn’t had much time to turn on the telly or open up a magazine. He wonders if he’s as buoyant as ever, as bright and shiny and glittering, as fun. He wonders if he’ll repeat the same mistakes, but he swears to himself that he won’t.  
He can’t, now that he’s aware of them. Of course he was attracted to Rick back then, he can’t deny it, but he should’ve just bitten the bullet and told him that he and Chris were an item, that they were lifebonded soulmates. Because Rick would have understood. Rick was always so kind and so accepting and he always had something to say that made Jon laugh and take all his cares away and turn everything as sunny as a spring morning even when he took him against a concert hall wall and ravished him there and Jon loved him for that.  
No.  
He wakes Chris from sleeping late. “Take me,” he begs.

#### 1977: Thirty-Three Years Old

Two shows at Empire Pool down, three to go. He and Chris stay in a hotel room near the venue for the sake of avoiding London traffic. They pass out as soon as Chris tells Jon happy birthday.  
But two hours later Jon wakes up. He is dreadfully thirsty, but the water in this hotel is a nightmare, so he creeps out of the room to buy something from the little shop in the lobby.  
As soon as he enters the hall he sees Rick. He is standing outside the door of his room, bloodshot drunk and fumbling with his key. He looks over after grunting at the doorknob and smiles at Jon. “Jon!” he says. “Jon. Help me. I’m.”  
Silly man. Jon steps toward him and opens his door for him. “Are you going to be alright?”  
“Suppose so,” Rick answers, then bumps his side against the threshold to the restroom. “Whoops.”  
Jon hurries inside, takes him by the arm, and guides him toward the bed. Here, at least, Rick sits down. He thanks Jon profusely. “Baby,” he calls him.  
“Ricky.”  
A liquor-flavored kiss ensues. Rick falls backward in the course of it, dragging Jon down with him. All Jon thinks of is what Rick might have had to drink. He is so thirsty. He can’t stop kissing him.

#### 1978: Thirty-Four Years Old

“I sometimes feel as if we may never leave Wembley Arena, I do.”  
“You’re telling me. Well.”  
“‘Well,’ what, Ricky?”  
“Trying to think of something worse I could be playing night after night than ‘Don’t Kill the Whale’ but I’m having a rough go of it.”  
“That’s terrible.”  
“You’re laughing, though.”  
“We tried.”  
“Tried to try.”  
“We did some good, though, you must agree?”  
“‘Madrigal’ is okay, I suppose.”  
“I had a feeling you’d say that.”  
“Humor my ego a little, Jon, please.”  
“You’ve more than enough going for you, to be sure, than for you to fall back on ‘Madrigal.’”  
“Like what?”  
“…”  
“…Jon?”  
“I should go. Where are my pants?”  
“…Chris waiting for you?”  
“Likely. If he’s not fallen asleep.”  
“I need to quit doing this.”  
“No, I do.”  
“I need to quit coming back. I know how happy the two of you…”  
“Were.”  
“Why are you two fighting so much, anyway?”  
“He’s never thought he deserved me. He thinks he’s done something to put me off of him, which absolutely is a falsehood, we’ve been together for ten years! I can’t think of anything no matter how hard I do of anything he could have done to make me leave him for you—”  
“…”  
“…”  
“…You haven’t, though.”  
“I need to go.”  
“…Happy birthday.”  
“Thank you.”

#### 1979: Thirty-Five Years Old

Jon and Chris shout their way into the bedroom. They’ve made the mistake of holding practice on Jon’s birthday, and now it is in contention whose idea for this arrangement is worse. Chris holds that Jon’s idea is too fanciful, too sunny, too major key. It doesn’t fit with the serious, fitful tone of the lyrics; Jon fires back that perhaps if Christopher insists on writing a song then he shouldn’t go about asking others for advice on it. And besides, he adds, this is Yes. This is a band that is supposed to be positive!  
One second they’re grabbing each other’s fists and the next they’re kissing and the next they’re yelling again.  
“Positive,” Chris says, shoving Jon a little with one hand and struggling out of his shirt with the other. “Nothing’s positive anymore.”  
“You’ve never been positive,” Jon screeches, kicking off his pants and at Chris’ hipbone. “You’ve always thought you’re trash, you have, you’ve never ever been positive.”  
Chris pins Jon down by the wrists and kisses him, biting his lower lip and tugging at it. “Trash seeks trash, though, doesn’t it?” he growls.  
Furious, Jon dives forward, yanks Chris’ pants down, and pulls his length into his mouth, tongue whipping along the sides. And he wonders how long their water has been polluted like this.

#### 1980: Thirty-Six Years Old

“Would you want to go public?” Rick asks.  
In the seven months since the two of them left Yes, Jon has not once imagined telling the world that he and Rick are together. He sits between Rick’s legs naked and rests his head on his shoulder.  
“Not yet,” he says.  
“Well,” and he stops to shrug. “I just thought that you and. If you don’t want to, it’s alright.”  
“I’m not ready.”  
“That’s fine, Jon, we don’t have to.” He runs his fingertips up and down Jon’s back, tapping them intermittently against his skin, playing some melody that even without keys Jon can tell is atonal, random.  
“I just…” Jon closes his eyes hard. “I just don’t think I could handle the world asking me about it and all, and coming after me anytime I try to go out, I’ve a career on my own now, you know, I’m free and all, I’ve got you and I’ve got Vangelis and I’ve myself and that’s what should matter now, bugger all to the rest of the world. Bugger all to it. I need it not a whit. Not a whit. I’m not ready for it. That tickles.”  
“I can stop if you want.”  
“Please.”  
When Rick’s hands drop, Jon backs his head away. He covers his chest. Where is his shirt?

#### 1981: Thirty-Seven Years Old

The cottage has gone dark and cold since the last time Jon ventured inside, dark and cold and he barely remembers where the light switches are but he finds them eventually and he wonders if Chris has come here, if he’s brought anyone, because Jon won’t, and he certainly can’t, now that he has proved too much a mess for even Rick’s sunshine to bleach away, and he passes by the couch where years earlier Chris said that as soon as it became anything but a pipe dream and he was sure it would he would marry him and he passes by the window where outside on the garden bench Chris gave him the Scorpio medallion he wears right now and he passes by the bedroom where he let Chris inside of him so many times, inside to feel and study and understand and he sits down on the edge of it and holds his face in his hands but he doesn’t cry because he’s had too long to do that and he’s missed his chance and then he laughs, because perhaps if he just waits in this spot then someday Chris will return to him, and he still feels the mist rising up around his cold, glacial being.  
He cannot remember the last time he spent a birthday alone.

#### 1982: Thirty-Eight Years Old

“Hello?”  
“Jon. Jon! Jon, happy birthday! Hi, just hear me out. I know it’s been a while but I’ve been writing with this fellow Trevor—Trevor Rabin, I don’t know if you’ve heard of him, I know you’ve been busy with Vangelis and all, but he’s done some things, you know, down in South Africa, but—anyway—anyway, we’ve got something very good going and all I want you to do is listen to a couple of songs, okay, I can send you a tape in the mail or—or! I can play them for you right now over the phone if you want, if you have a moment, whatever is good for you, just let me know, please, because I can’t imagine anyone singing these but you, I mean I know you’ve always said I can sing and Trevor thinks so too and he’s rather good at it himself but your voice has always been the best and I love to hear you sing, I always have, I’ve never gone a day without listening to you sing, and I miss it and I want to hear your voice again, I want to hear you talk and sing and—oh, Jon, I want to touch you again, I can’t—I can’t—”  
“…Christopher…?”  
“Hi, Jon.”  
“…Christopher…”  
“…How are you doing…?”

#### 1983: Thirty-Nine Years Old

“All I want this year,” Jon says, steadying his breathing. “Is to know how many times.”  
“How many times,” Chris says.  
“You and Trevor. How many times.”  
Chris blinks at him, ocean-colored irises appearing and disappearing, stupid as he is silent. They are driving to dinner, the first they’ve had together as a celebration in four years. A strange number. Such a strange thing, spending time apart from Chris, especially now when he thinks about Trevor, who’s so young and so fond of Chris and Chris is so fond of him, and his hands tighten to the point of trembling behind the wheel, his eyelids following suit.  
He pictures Trevor. Pictures Trevor and Chris together and he steams with hate. He has to repeat a mantra to himself, that the rivers have converged. He must picture every single time he was with Rick. Every single time. Discipline.  
“Don’t answer that,” he says, exhaling, feeling the heat in his face. “I had Rick. You don’t have to.”  
Chris says, “I could count it on no fingers, Jon.”  
Liar, Jon wants to say, but he can’t make himself believe it. At the next red light he leans over and kisses Chris, then pulls away and murmurs, “The rivers have converged.”  
Chris rests his hand on Jon’s lap. “Yes,” he says. “They have.”

#### 1984: Forty Years Old

It has fallen into slight disrepair, but Chris and Jon’s cottage still stands. They haven’t stepped foot in it together since 1979. Jon’s instinct is to take Chris by the hand and lead him around the garden and ask if he remembers when they kissed or held hands near it or the like. But instead Chris leads him inside, and he follows, graciously, all the way into the bedroom.  
His next instinct is to ask, when he’s halfway undressed, if Chris minds that he’s not exactly young and slim and angelic anymore, but Chris pulls him down and helps him out of the rest of his outfit, and he drops it before a word comes out of his mouth.  
Then he wants to ask what it’s like being with someone he doesn’t argue with as opposed to him, the petulant little thing who kicked him before, but Chris takes a hold of his wrist gently, and he remembers that even when they made love amid a fight in the past it never ended in anything but ecstasy, that no one yells at someone they truly think would abandon them.  
Chris starts right away with the kind of handjob that makes Jon shut up before he knows what he’d say to earn it. And he whispers in Jon’s ear, “Happy birthday.”


End file.
